Center party leader Annie Lööf said today that she regrets the Center party congress’s decision to work towards making circumcision illegal except when necessary for medical reasons. At press conferences today, Lööf stressed that it was not the position favored by party leadership, and that freedom of religion is really (really!) important to the Center party.
Since the current Social Democratic-led government is beholden to the Center party for its continued existence, what the Center party decides, at its congress or otherwise, matters. Perhaps decisions like these are like the Swedish expression barnsjukdomar, which means something like growing pains as the body matures, that then blow over as they grow up. The Center party has support numbers that allows them to flex some muscle – but that makes their tantrums all the more problematic.
Everyone knows that religion plus politics is a area where only angels dare to tread. And yet, the Center party at its congress today decided to do just that: it will formally and officially work towards making circumcision illegal unless medically necessary.
Circumcision is a religious obligation in two of the dominant world religions, Judaism and Islam. It’s also a widespread practice throughout the western world, and even a hospital union in Beijing (with 50 other hospitals as union members) decided only this April that they too will “popularize” circumcision at all its hospitals as a way to prevent HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases (Chinadaily.com).
The Center party has injected itself into this practice to protest the “insult” to a male infant’s integrity. Speakers for the proposal argued that there were aspects to the issue that outweigh freedom of religious expression. In fact, said the Center party’s vice chair Anders W. Jonsson, “the debate wasn’t about religion at all, it took into account a children’s rights perspective and an integrity perspective.”
Though the Center party might say it isn’t about religion, there are a whole lot of others that say it is. Mohamed Temsamani, chairman for the United Islamic Associations of Sweden, stated the the Center party decision limits freedom of religion. Further, “Muslims and Jews,” he said, “aren’t going to stop circumcising their boys. The risk is that people will be forced to do it away from prying eyes in an unsafe manner” reported Expressen. “If this were to go through” said Aron Verständig, chairman of the Council of Swedish Jewish Communities, “it would mean the end of being able to live as a Muslim or a Jew in Sweden” (aftonbladet.se).
Previously, only the Sweden Democrats and the Left party have been opposed to circumcision being legal. Now the Center party is joining their ranks.
The Swedish public school is in the news today. Then again, when is the Swedish public school not in the news?
Today’s news on the school front is threefold: school news from the Center party congress; school news on the curriculum front; and a computer malfunction that is currently causing hundreds upon hundreds of school computers to crash.
A blog at this same location yesterday, on the ongoing Center party congress, promised updates – so here’s an update. A motion to allow uncertified teachers to give school students a formal grade at the completion of a course lost. Not by much. The vote for allowing this was lost only because the congress was split on the issue and they tossed a coin to decide.
The Center party leadership was for allowing uncertified teachers to give out grades because, they argued, there aren’t enough certified teachers around. And the work uncertified teachers do should be shown official appreciation. Plus, they would only be allowed to do it if the school principal was ok with it.
On the other hand, people who were against the motion argued that it would depreciate the quality of school education even more, it would be insulting to teachers who actually put in all the work to get a degree, and would even jeopardize the trustworthiness of a grade given in this manner.
When the motion went to vote, the results were an even 245 for, and 245 against – hence the need for a coin toss. For the DN article, click here.
In a second bit of news, although this did come out a couple days ago, there’s a suggestion from Swedish National Agency for Education (Skolverket) to stop educating kids on ancient Rome and Greece because there just isn’t time in the school year. In the Swedish school, they argue, history begins after year 1700.
In Sweden’s defense, there is a huge uproar about this, and it isn’t likely to get pushed through. This time.
Finally, school computers across the country are dying, DN reports. It started last Wednesday, when the first reports of laptop death were circulated. Since then, 750 computers have reportedly been hit, and more are expected.
The problem is a faulty drive routine that causes computer failure when restarted. The company behind the drive, Fujitsu, is working the weekend (we assume) to fix the problem. New USB drives are being distributed, but there’s no fixed date for the problem’s eradication.
There just isn’t a lot of good school news out there. Sorry.
The Center party’s congress began today in Karlstad, and the comments in the papers appear to be mixed. Göran Eriksson, political analyst at Svenska Dagbladet, writes that although it goes well for the Center party, the support for the four parties that together make up the united front of government is still near an all time low.
What’s also got to pinch is that the whole point behind the Center party letting the Social Democrats hold on to power was to continue to freeze out the Sweden Democrats. And yet, the Sweden Democrats are only getting stronger and more established. So that didn’t work (SVDEriksson).
What did work for the Center party was getting a whole lot of sway over the government’s policy. The Social Democrats are having to do things that they are seriously unhappy about, in particular the elimination of the extra wealth tax, but also looking over the holy grail of LAS, and cutting back on the Swedish Public Employment Service (arbetsförmedlingen). LAS, the law on employment protection (or, lagen om anställningsskydd) has been around in some form since 1974, and formed part of the very apex of dreams for a perfect society. LAS today, even in its slightly watered down form, still makes it extremely difficult to fire someone from their job. This has good sides and bad sides of course, but the Center party made it clear that their support was contingent upon allowing more exceptions to the “last in first out” employment rule. That this hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean that the Center party is going to let it slide.
Anyway, Göran Eriksson wonders, if by their success, the Center party is losing votes for the Social Democrats – in which case, if these voters go over the Sweden Democrats – Center is contributing to the decreasing popularity of the government they went out on a limb to support. Eriksson, however, seems to be just taking it to the extreme, because it’s fun to be extreme. Voters that leave the Social Democrats because of more liberal Center politics aren’t that likely to head farther right.
The other main thing that came out of the congress’ opening shots was a jab at the former alliance parties, saying they were basically spineless for walking out on the talks on combating gang violence. Lööf said, that if parties were serious about ending shootings and violent deaths they would scrape up the courage to remain at the negotiating table and “make the decisions that need to be made.” The Center party, of course, had just that courage, and are open for continued cooperation – “building a new security for everyone” (). For some people it’s called being an enabler, but others can call it courage. What you see depends on where you stand.
The smart thing to do is not, however, to react to crowd-pleasing opening speeches (guilty as charged), but to wait and see what the summary statements have in the way of real politics. The congress has three days to go – stay tuned.
The Christian Democratic party struck another nail in the Alliance coffin today when it
One: said it would oppose the elimination of the extra wealth tax (värnskatt), a suggestion put forward, and pushed through in the 2020 budget, by KD’s former fellow alliance parties, the Center and Liberal parties, and even its current friend the Moderate party, and
Two: said it wouldn’t bother writing up a shadow budget together with the Moderate party.
Not liking the elimination of the extra wealth tax is pretty common. After all, it gives a huge tax break to the people who least need a tax break. It shouldn’t be forgotten, however, that the tax was supposed to be temporary, and, it was based on a crisis in the Swedish economy that has since been more than cleared up. The extra wealth tax has no legitimacy because the factors for which it was set up to help out with no longer exist. By all means, tax wealthy people because they’re wealthy if that seems fair to people, but at least be honest about it.
Right now, the extra wealth tax goes straight into the ginormous tax pot that the ruling parties can use as they will, without saying anything more specific. The Christian Democrats are saying no to its elimination because they – like no one else, they say – would use the money exclusively for health and welfare.
This would be great if the Christian Democrats had any say whatsoever in where the governments spends your tax money, but they don’t. They’re saying it to to look good, but it in fact what they’re saying has all the value of a selfie. It’s likely also a jab at the Center and Liberal parties for cooperating with the Social Democrats and Green parties. Here the Christian Democrats are saying “look at these awful center-left parties that would give a tax break to rich people – we certainly wouldn’t” when they certainly would have, if they had won the election.
In more Christian Democratic news (reminder, they have a whopping 7% of the popular vote, but we’ll headline them here anyway) they’re backing out of writing a shadow budget with the Moderate party because there isn’t a chance it will win: “…because it’s hard to get [our budget] through, it isn’t meaningful to do it” Christian Democratic party leader Ebba Busch Thor explains ().
She has a point, in that there isn’t a chance a budget by the Moderate and Christian Democratic parties would pass, but she’s missing the point that by not creating a budget along with the Moderate party, she’s not even showing up. Voters are given no thoughtful alternative to the Social Democratic and Green party budget, and can just as well go back to bed. Unless they come out with their own budget, which they might well do in the next while, one can wonder if the party is making itself deserving of the mandate it won and the power it desires.
The latest shows that the Moderate party is back at the level it was last October, before the alliance fell apart. The recent numbers show them having a 19% support rating, here tied with the Sweden Democrats (only about a week ago, another poll showed the Sweden Democrats at 20.2% – but that was then). The Social Democrats came in at 26%, and the Center and Left parties tied for a distant 3rd at 9% each. In last place, tied at 5%, are the Liberal and Green parties. The question asked was, “if the election was today, who would you vote for?”.
This seems to be the new normal. 26% is pretty much a new low for the Social Democrats, but they’re still the party most people are going to. Analysts at DN/Ipsos remark that SD, M and KD (at 7%) are gaining and losing voters mostly to each other, and Sabuni’s non-lift for the Liberal party is becoming only clearer. The Moderate party’s 19% is up, but only from a pretty low level previously.
If anyone was looking for a bump, or a dip, from the right’s trip to Tel Aviv, the non-agreement on fighting gang violence, the bank tax, gas tax or tax rebate for pensioners, the free year, Sölvesborg, Shekarabi’s facebook comments – or basically any effect from the myriad of issues over the last few weeks, is going to be pretty disappointed.
Raising taxes on highly polluting sources of energy is an effective way to curb CO2 emissions, says a new report from the OECD. However, 70% of energy-related CO2 emissions in developed and emerging economies are “entirely untaxed,” giving emission-producing companies little reason to change business practices (bit.ly/OECDtaxes).
Where is Sweden in all this? Sweden has the highest tax on carbon dioxide of all OECD countries – 107 euro per ton CO2 – but this tax is apparently not evenly spread over all emission sources. Only Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and Switzerland meet or are over the threshold of 30 euro/ton CO2 over all emissions. According to the OECD as reported by SvD, the reason Sweden isn’t part of this elite crowd is because we use so much biodeisel, and biodeisel is exempt from CO2 taxes.
For many countries, especially developing ones, it is politically challenging to make prices high enough to encourage (or at least make economically worthwhile) deep reductions in CO2 emissions. The Yellow Vest movement in France is one example of popular pushback. In Sweden, the revolt over the taxes on gas (bensinupproret 2.0) is a minor variant of the same. Australia, Canada, Great Britain and a dozen-odd states in the US have taken significant steps in taxing emissions. In Canada, though, the opposition Conservative party has promised to do away with the tax if they win in the upcoming election (nyti.ms/NYTimesEmissions). Also exerting significant popular pressure, but in the other direction, are the pro-environment youth movements pressuring their governments for just these sorts of taxes.
The main report, with a country-wide breakdown so Sweden can really see where it’s at, will be presented in October. We can expect bigger headlines then.
Discussions between all of Sweden’s political parties – except SD, as discussed in this blog post – on measures to combat rising gang violence has been a hot topic. It’s been weeks. It’s been a couple meetings. And it’s all just ended with the Moderate, Liberal and Christian Democratic parties leaving the deliberations in frustration.
Johan Forssell of the Moderate party has been vocal about his impatience with the process for a while now. On Friday, he said that the government had until Saturday to get its proposal together. Today is Saturday, and the Moderate, Liberal and Christian Democratic parties have now walked because the government’s proposal did not include some of the reforms that they wanted. These included increasing the number of police working on combating gang violence, doubling the sentence for gang-related crimes, getting rid of the youth rebate for offenders under 21 (straffrabatt för unga) and scrapping the “multi-crime discount” (mängdrabatt).
Just as an aside, the multi-crime discount is a particularly interesting Swedish sentencing praxis in which the more criminal offenses committed, the less time is served for the crimes after the first one. For example, say you have committed three crimes of similar severity. You are given the full sentence for the first crime, and the time you serve for the other crimes is reduced. This means that if all three crimes would normally get two years jail time, you would serve two years for the first crime, less than two years for the second crime and even less again for the third crime. If you are of the criminal bent, you definitely want to plan your crimes so that they all come up in court at once.
At some point in history this might have made sense. It’s hard to say. But at this point in history, the Moderate party and several others are saying it’s not making sense anymore.
The government, meanwhile, is going ahead with its own list of measures, being, one must assume, the more low-hanging fruit that everyone agreed on. This list includes things like getting rid of the youth rebate after repeated criminality, giving the police more leeway for reading encrypted communications, increased sentences for conveying narcotics, and increased sentences for gang-on-gang crimes. I’m not making this up. You can read about it in SvD here.
Further, the government has plans to make it easier for the police to get a search warrant for gang-related premises, and to create a national program to help people who want to get out of being in a gang.
It’s possible the Moderate party’s Johan Forssell painted himself into a corner with his ultimatum, and then had to follow up with leaving the negotiations. It wouldn’t have been a big deal to sign off on what they could agree on, and then go on to say that he would have liked a heck of a lot more but that the other parties said no. That would have forced the other parties to explain their no’s, rather than Forsell looking a just a tiny bit pouty. The Center Party chose to stay (just another example of the ever widening split in the former alliance) and looks either soft on the Social Democrats, or smart. Or both.
Sweden joined another defense initiative today. If you’re starting to wonder if you only dreamed that Sweden had a policy of not allying itself militarily with anyone, it’s understandable. After all, that is the rhetoric. But the reality has always been a little more hidden. Well, subtle. Maybe just more complicated.
Today’s announcement was that Sweden is signing on to the French initiative called EI2, European Intervention Initiative. EII was the first go around, EI2 is the second incarnation. Svenska Dagbladet boned it out for its readers ():
This was all originally Macron’s idea. His proposal was a common strategic culture, working towards a common defense budget, a common rapid response task force and a common action policy, including a humanitarian one. “To face new threats, Europe needs a strong defense,” the French Defense Ministry tweeted. “With the European Intervention Initiative, 10 European countries are committed to its protection” (). Sweden and Norway make 12.
As Norway’s inclusion hints at, the initiative lies outside of EU, and it is not meant to affect NATO in any way. Minister for Defense Peter Hultqvist adds that EI2 is a collaboration on risk assessment and threat analysis, experiences, and analysis of possible scenarios. “We want to use this as a platform with which to avoid crises in Europe and in the countries who participate” (http://bit.ly/SvDEI2). In other words, no Swedish forces are committed anywhere with EI2. We’re only just talking.
As SvD notes, the list of countries with whom Sweden cooperates tangent with the military isn’t that short. Finland and Great Britain were both recent defense cooperation signatories, and Sweden is signed up to materially support the UN and the EU. Sweden cooperates with NATO and is a member of Nordefco, a defense collaboration between us and Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Norway.
Yes, Sweden is officially militarily alliance-free. But we talk to people. We collaborate and we cooperate. We act in solidarity with people, and have promised to help people around us. And if the rubber hits the road here in Sweden, we hope that other countries will cooperate, collaborate, act in solidarity, and help us out too.
Ardalan Shekarabi might post as “a social democrat” on facebook, but he’s actually Minister for Public Administration (civilminister), not some random self-identified voter on the internet. Therefore it’s no featherweight suggestion he makes there that Sweden needs “a sustainable immigration policy and to keep the number of new immigrants low” ().
His facebook post reflects the split in the Social Democratic party regarding immigration, with several prominent persons expressing themselves rather in favor of a more restrictive immigration. As SvD notes, the youth wing of the party, SSU, came out in favour of an EU-wide immigration policy, stating that Sweden can’t be the only country taking asylum responsibility (). The thinktank Tiden has asked prominent Social Democrat, and Norrköping City Council member, Lars Stjernkvist, to formulate a future immigration policy in which the dreaded word “volume” is discussed ().
Shekarabi writes that “extreme segregation” is a threat to social cohesion, and that he would like to create “an inclusive national identity.”
This comes at almost the same time as the government has decreed (today) that new immigrants who decide for themselves that they want to live in a “socially vulnerable area” – IOW an area that is populated largely with immigrants who are low on the socioeconomic scale – will lose their daily social allowances (dagsersättning) from the government ().
The Liberal party immigration spokesperson Fredrik Malm remarked that there are problems of extremely crowded living and segregation associated with these areas: School children, for example, can’t concentrate on their studies when they live in crowded conditions. If new immigrants live in state-run institutions, it is easier to reach them and provide social services, it is argued ().
However, no one has suggested actually revoking the Law of Own Accommodation (EBO-lagen – lagen om eget boende), that was begun in 1995 and allowed new immigrants to establish themselves wherever in the country they wanted. Quite naturally, this turned out to be where they found others from their country, and where they didn’t feel so alone. This has turned out to be city suburbs, and the rest is segregation history. In many respects, these areas are economic grey areas anyway, and it is unsure whether the threat of taking away allowances is going to have any effect.
Meanwhile, Shekarabi’s post may only be his way of jockeying for a better position in the race to succeed Löfven as party leader. As Rahm Emanuel said to Obama in the beginning of Obama’s first term as president, at the height of the 2008 economic crisis, “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste” (nyti.ms/NYTimesBiggestCrisis).
